I want to tell you of the night that the storm came in. Of how I was out on my feet, wandering around town and hoping for an act of God to prevent me from ever making it home again. I want to tell you of the night the storm came in, how I saw all my pasts and futures at once and felt like screaming out about something so terrible in the present. I need to tell you of that storm, of how the light collapsed into yellow and hung overhead, of that strange mood that made the world take notice and of the silence which allowed single leaves to be heard in the little swirls they'd been caught up in. I want to tell you of how the sky lost its mind, and of the haunted song that that first rebel wind sung as it snaked its way through nothing streets. The storm touched me that night. It whipped up grit around me and stung me, and it was hard not to weep in the pause of that great foreboding. I have to tell you of that storm, of our storm, a common storm... of a beauty that came in from the distance, rolling like the furious sea and churning up blues and silvers and golds. I want to tell you of the eyes I saw, how lost they'd become and how I knew we'd never survive another. It was like that for so many that night, half the city, running in fear for their lives while being chased down by a darkness they hoped would never arrive. And I was walking around town, miserable with life, a rotten heart, poor lungs, circling the old square and thinking about young whores and young love and how I had no money to rent or keep either. And that was when the first splodge of the great wash arrived... Thick and singular: SPLODGE. Just like that. Just the one and then a pause and then nothing and then just another. O, CLACK! A cracking whip somewhere out there, fathoms deep in the nowhere. And then the sky shattered and lit up and gave light, and the old bastard was upon us, running us down and raging away through the heart of our town. Through the haze of that violence I watched the destruction play out, wanted to fall into it and be consumed by it. The trees around me bent and swayed, those with weak roots were pulled right on up and carried away. What was not nailed down and what had no heart was taken too. Some roofs collapsed and others slid right off; the old school became a hollow, whistling spirityard of tragedy and horror, all the children from all the years screaming in unison as the terror finally came. The city took it hard that night, took one hell of a beating. And I was out and I watched it happen and I never wanted to make it home again.

There were fires up on the hill in the distance. Sheets of lightning, jagged too, explosions and flames and dragons' tongues. Smoke rose off that thing like water sizzling on hot stone, and all around, O great hell had broken loose. There was some fury out in our world that night, something that we all understood but which noone could explain. The first of the city's rivers burst her banks and after that the second too. Cars trying to out speed the storm were washed across the road and into each other, a great skidding opera as the water rose, spinning with the fish that looked out into a strange new world. And that was the storm, the thrashing we had been waiting for all these years, the test of who we were and what we had left. In that force people were crucified, went down without a murmur and even less hope. For once you could do nothing but surrender, give yourself up to a greater power and be thankful that kicking back was no option at all. I was stopped still, in that old square, being whipped by winds and stoned with hail and staring out into the whirr that had come to greet me then. And I'm telling you, and I said it before, there was gold out there... Gold and silver and pewter and yellow. And it was like a place I'd seen before, like a dream and like a river, like everything I'd ever wanted.

'Worst Storm Since '88', it read when it was all over and finished.'17 dead in a Once in a Generation Tempest''Dog Found Stranded on a Raft. Weak but alive. BELIEVED TO HAVE A HEART!'

And that was the storm. All gone and all blown out, the city and its people stripped of everything they didn't need. In the old square I had watched it come in, watched it prepare its way and had looked through it in search of something I didn't know what. And when the night finally closed down, when we'd all had enough, soaked through and nauseous with water, I was left with just one way to go and that way was East. In the miserable, tail-end dripping of such fury, with the storm's better half all raged through, tender tender now, I took out a cigarette and made to light it up. Marinated through it broke at the filter and folded over, hung from my lips like I was a beaten man. I was. I was walking home to my second night in a bed that would smother me in torment, have me come to in the violence of solitude, mad for yesterday again.

I didn't look at the lines for Joe M. (So I didn't cheat!) ., but I usually try to guess one myself that I think he would like. And I got it right! I guessed the line about the dog believed to have a heart...❤️ XxxxX

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